Rimini Street Helps Brandeis University Save an Estimated $8M in Maintenance Costs Over 10 Years

COLLABORATE 14 Conference – Rimini Street, Inc., the leading
independent provider of enterprise software support for SAP AG’s
(NYSE:SAP) Business
Suite and BusinessObjects
software and Oracle Corporation’s (NYSE:ORCL) Siebel,
PeopleSoft,
JD
Edwards, E-Business
Suite, Oracle
Database, Hyperion
and Oracle
Retail software, today announced that Brandeis University, one of
the premier universities in North America, has been able to fund several
key initiatives, including implementing a long-needed centralized
records management and piloting an IT governance initiative, by
reallocating an estimated 800 thousand dollars in total annual
maintenance cost savings from switching to Rimini Street independent
support. In addition to the cost savings, Brandeis successfully avoided
an expensive forced upgrade that the software vendor was requiring
simply to retain full support of its PeopleSoft applications. Like
Brandeis, public sector and commercial organizations around the world
are using the substantial savings gained from a switch to Rimini Street
independent support to preserve jobs and focus resources on critical
organizational priorities, while benefitting from Rimini Street’s
ultra-responsive support program that includes support for
customizations, interoperability and performance tuning.

“Our switch to Rimini Street Support is netting Brandeis an estimated
800 thousand dollars in total annual savings, both freeing up
significant financial and staff resources and allowing us to invest in
the priority needs of the University,” said Brandeis’ Chief Information
Officer, John Unsworth.

Brandeis Achieving Strategic Institutional Goals with Rimini Street

Established in 1948, Brandeis University is a top-ranked private North
American research university in Waltham, Mass. In June 2012, Brandeis
switched from Oracle support to Rimini Street support and in doing so,
immediately cut its total annual maintenance costs by nearly 800
thousand dollars, which includes decreasing their annual maintenance
fees by 50 percent compared to the software vendor’s annual fees.
Brandeis also was able to redirect much-needed, expensive internal staff
by avoiding costly, disruptive upgrades to its PeopleSoft applications
that were required by the software vendor in order to continue to
receive full support for the University’s PeopleSoft applications.

The University is redeploying its savings from its switch to Rimini
Street Support to fund a central records management project as part of
its larger campus-wide risk mitigation goals. Furthermore, Brandeis was
able to avoid reductions in its IT workforce, and instead redeployed the
freed up resources to focus on priority projects such as customizing its
existing PeopleSoft systems to better suit the University’s needs, and
addressing functions with high ROI such as workflow, reporting,
security, faculty activity reports and research administration.

Added Unsworth, “Rimini Street is helping us make what we have, do what
we want. Before, Oracle set the calendar for upgrades, which in turn
determined how a number of Library & Technology Services employees, and
others on campus, spent substantial amounts of their time and limited
budget. Today, the PeopleSoft experts that we have at Brandeis are
investing their valuable talents and time into higher ROI projects that
achieve some efficiency or address some long-standing requirement for
the campus, rather than spending that time and talent implementing,
testing and rolling out upgrades that have low ROI for the University.”

Unsworth also offered the following insight to CIOs considering moving
from vendor to independent support: “If you, as CIO, make the choice I
made — to switch to Rimini Street independent support — you have to be
ready to consider that it will present your IT staff who have PeopleSoft
expertise an opportunity to upskilll to administrative computing experts
instead of simply PeopleSoft experts. One is a long-term investment and
the other is just a transferrable skill.” Like Unsworth’s team and IT
departments across other organizations, the move to Rimini Street
independent support can provide the opportunity for new and valuable
skill sets by freeing up limited resources for projects that can help
transform, provide innovation or better meet the needs of the
organization.

Brandeis Benefiting from Rimini Street’s Premium-Level Support Model

More than 500 organizations around the world currently rely upon
independent support with Rimini Street and have cut annual software
support fees by 50 percent. Like Brandeis, many organizations also
leverage Rimini Street’s premium-level service model to help drive
additional significant reductions in related support and maintenance
costs. These include support for customizations, interoperability,
performance and interfaces at no additional fee, as well as an assigned
24x7x365 Primary Support Engineer (PSE) that eliminates the need for
extra maintenance resources and headcount associated with inefficient,
burdensome vendor support processes and policies.

“Since 2005, Rimini Street clients around the world have benefited from
one of the most robust and innovative support programs in the industry,
and have used their substantial savings to improve their bottom line
results and fund strategic business initiatives,” said Seth
Ravin, CEO, Rimini Street. “We are proud that Brandeis chose Rimini
Street as its trusted software support partner, and look forward to
continuing to help the University achieve its long-term strategic goals.”

About Rimini Street, Inc.

Rimini Street is the leading independent provider of enterprise software
support services. The company is redefining enterprise support services
with an innovative, award-winning program that enables Oracle and SAP
licensees to save up to 90 percent on total support costs over a decade,
including saving 50 percent on their annual support fees. Clients can
remain on their current software release without any required upgrades
or migrations for at least 15 years after switching to Rimini Street.
Hundreds of clients, including global, Fortune 500, midmarket, and
public sector organizations from across a broad range of industries have
selected Rimini Street as their trusted, independent support provider.
To learn more, please visit www.riministreet.com or
call within the USA 888-870-9692 or internationally +1 702-839-9671.

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